the tattoo inside my brain
by Jem Doe
Summary: The Ghost was right, Eve noticed.


The Ghost was right, Eve noticed, detachedly watching a man die through a panel of glass. Being invisible was good. After confirming her mark was dying and there was no commotion that could save him, she left the building, head down low and eyes on the ground. Ambulances whirred past her, but it did not matter. The man was dead and gone already - just like Eve, in a sense.

* * *

Villanelle cocked her head at Eve. Eve stared back. The empty flat stood between them, Villanelle sitting all splayed out on Eve's too comfortable red velvet chair, which were one of the too few luxuries she allowed herself these days.

"Are you real?"

Her dreams were too realistic, Villanelle always near the edge of her vision, meters away but just a touch away from becoming fog. She usually did, escaping between Eve's fingers like sand.

"Good question!"

She is. Eve is somewhere between relieved and worried. She's not sure where, exactly, though.

* * *

Villanelle didn't shoot her, not really. And if she did, well: the bullet went past her, so close that it burnt her face with the collateral heat. She fell, the adrenalin taking the best of her, and passed out.

When she came to her senses, Villanelle was long gone. Eve wasn't satisfied with that, so she went to find her. Eve knew that it wasn't a probability that Villanelle would ever want to see her again - Eve had read enough books on psychopaths to know how one acted, and Villanelle was the textbook example of it -, now that she had broke the rules Villanelle had imposed, but again, she knew Villanelle enough to know she would come back.

Her expectations were wrong; Villanelle was nowhere to be seen. It was like she was a deeply intricate illusion Eve had concocted, only smoke and mirrors to be found.

It was exciting in an oddly sinister way, like a cat-and-mouse game where Eve wasn't sure who was who. Maybe she was the cat. Maybe not.

After she exhausted all of her venues, Eve stopped and thought. Villanelle had come to her, hadn't she, after Eve started calling her attention? So shouldn't Eve do more of the same?

Considering she was out of a job (probably), it'd be hard. Looking at her options, she didn't have many. Sitting down to think, Eve tried to guess how she could get in contact with Villanelle again. What could she do…?

Murder. If she started doing murders, then Villanelle was bound to find her, right?

* * *

"Finding a handler was easy. Maybe the easiest part of it." Eve said, eating her popcorn. Salt made her feel better after a murder.

"Konstantin?" Villanelle asked, playing an eating game with herself. Eve threw a popcorn onto her open mouth, and Villanelle did an impressive maneuver to catch it.

"Yes. He accepted my conditions. I was surprised by that, actually."

"Which are…?"

Another handful of popcorn before an answer. Villanelle had the patience of waiting, a miracle on itself.

"Have you ever heard of a Rube Goldberg machine?"

* * *

Every day, the mark would wake up at six, then spend exactly thirty minutes on Facebook before rising up and doing another thirty minutes on the treadmill. Fifteen minutes on a bath later, the mark would go through the door to the cafeteria a brisk ten-minute walk away to grab a coffee with soy milk (severe lactose allergy written neatly on his medical files), to drink during the morning and refill with the office coffee, before heading to work. After work, he went straight up home, ate delivery, and played video games until late hours. Eve liked when marks were neat and precise, because it made her job easier.

It was really easy to get into his apartment - the nice old lady down the hall who thought she was a delivery lady hurt a little, if she was honest -, and change all clocks but one to exactly one hour ahead of time. The one clock she hadn't changed was the only one she had no access to: his cellphone. Eve didn't know why he used a digital clock for his alarms rather than the perfectly fine cellphone clock, but it helped her.

Eve did not see her mark waking up in a late panic and swearing up and down at his clock, blaming it on a "power outage", since she was busy at his office, changing the soy milk powder he had bought into normal milk powder, humming to herself as she cleaned her fingerprints off the plastic container and added those of his manager, someone that actively hated the mark, and a person the mark had angrily discussed with in public more than one time, and more recently, had almost threatened him. Motive, reasoning, whatever you named it, the man would look guilty.

* * *

"So all you did is change his clock and milk?" Villanelle turned up her nose at that. Eve nodded, feeling like she should sleep - at some point of Eve's story, they had moved to bed, staring at each other's eyes lazily. "That's so boring. Mundane. Absolutely no fun at all."

"What would've you done?" Eve shot back, but she knew the answer in the way Villanelle grinned. "Okay, gross."

"I haven't said anything yet!" Villanelle protested, but Eve knew her well enough. Villanelle then huffed, lips pouting like a surly child. "Your method is boring, and that's the truth."

"Interesting how you don't consider I'm not actively trying to kill you." Eve said, smoothly, which made Villanelle perk up, eyes glinting in the half-light. "I did just say those were over-complicated machines to make a kill."

"That'd be fun." Giggling like the child she was, Villanelle leaned up, closing in the small space that separated them, kissing her with softness Eve hadn't thought possible. She reciprocated, letting Villanelle taste the bitter poison she had coated her lips with.

Villanelle noticed - of course she had, she wasn't stupid - and reeled back in, eyes mad, sitting in the bed. Eve followed suit, waiting.

"Poison?"

"Yes." Eve carefully dabbed it away on the clean sheets, taking care to it not touch her skin. Her lips were already tingling, and Eve did not wish to grow a resistance to the antidote - safely stashed away on her purse. "It won't kill you in this dose, though."

"That's no good." Villanelle tutted, putting a hand - warm, surprisingly soft - on Eve's face. "I want you to keep trying."

"Then I will." Eve replied, kissing Villanelle. Ideas were starting to brew on her head, and Eve had to supress a grin - it'd be fun.


End file.
